Escape to the Movies: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - There and Back Again

NanoxVox

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Tradjus said:
Welp, that's done.
Time for a six movie adaptation of The Silmarillion! :D
Six movies, that's not nearly enough. There needs to be at least 50 Silmarillion movies made if not more.
 

Grabehn

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Sep 22, 2012
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I gotta say that I didn't like the Special Fx in the first movie (Azog and the huargs looked extremely cartoony and "shiny" for some reason), and I DREAD to see the second one ever again since it had a stronger than strong feel of being just filler.

But watching the third one was a pretty good time, made all better by having Christopher Lee, seeing him fight on basically anything is just SO FUCKING COOL!

daxterx2005 said:
What was that last picture supposed to be referencing?
Is Spider-man going to be in the Marvel cinematic universe...?
Hackers/leaked stuff/whatever revealed that Marvel and Sony were talking about letting Spider Man be in the Civil War movies but that ended in nothing as it seems.
 

SlaughterPriest

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I know that I will see it and enjoy it, but my greatest enjoyment of the Hobbit films will be some time after the extended dvd is released. I am eagerly looking forward to the fanedits that will come out on fanedit.org eventually. I know someone will do a "book" edit and try to minimize the 3 movies into what was just in the book. And of course some will just try to make a really good version, keeping extra stuff, but cutting out all the most offensive bits of filler (dwarf-elf romanceish stuff and elvish "healing" (magic) in the second, Azog), probably ending up with 2 movies. It will be worth waiting for.
 

Swarmcrow

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Dec 11, 2008
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arc1991 said:
Gizmo1990 said:
I liked it. It was much better than the 2nd one. Plus I also don't care how much fan service or unnecessary it was:

Seeing Saruman and Elrond kick the shit out of the Nazgul while Galadriel made Saruon her ***** was epic
Or how about

Billy Motherfuckin Connely playing Dain (Soon to be King Dain) riding an armored war pig and kicking arse with a giant hammer!

It was such a fun film, the scale of the battle was just amazing, i have never seen a film were 75% of it is literally a battle between 5 armies, call this film what you want guys, but it does some things better than Lotr did by a mile.

And why is everyone complaining about the giant worms? They are called Earth Eaters for a reason...they eat earth, not peope, think of them as GIANT version of the worms you find in your garden. Why would they attack when that isn't what they used for? :S

God some people didn't pay attention.


Because if you have a Freaking Giant Worms That dig tunnels for your freaking army ... there is no one goddammn reason why you cant dig your way into the lonely mountain, kill Thorin and his Dwarfs and take over the kingdom under the mountain while the Elf king and Dáin kill each other


.. the Freaking Worms are "game changing factor" because they are basically free way pass into any fortified city in the Tolkien universe

remember all the troubles Mordor had to get into the white city of Gondor ?

well giant worms mean you don't even need to take the damn river .. you can dig your way into Gondor .. catch everyone off guard and win the war before your enemy knows the war has started


beside.... THERE ARE NO FREAKING GIANT WORM IN THE TOLKIEN UNIVERSE !!!!

in the books "worm" is a term they use to talk about DRAGONS .. more specifically Serpent like Dragons that cant Fly
 

ninja51

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Maaaaaan, I'd say this was by far my least favorite of the three. I've seen the extended cuts of both previous films and outside of the plot following Thorin's father, I thought they were pretty fantastically done, and almost criminally undercut the movie through a lot of necessary omissions, particularly the Mirkwood forest, which is like 25 minutes in the extended cut, and gets tense as fuck! This film, having not seen its extended cut yet, felt almost totally flawed. Its pacing was all over the place, using what should have been the climax of the last film as its opening, it had weird hardcore death scenes with war is hell aftermaths followed immediately by a dwarf comically headbutting 5 orcs to death, it just couldn't land anything it tried to execute. I've been a long time defender of the first two films, but this one seriously, as movie bob explains, does NOT stick the landing. On anything. Like fucking nothing is executed properly here. The tone is too mixed to work, Legolas is still just in there because PJ really likes him and thinks he's a badass, characters don't evolve whatsoever and not one has a single character arc including Bilbo, the elven/dwarven love was totally mishandled and made pretty pointless to include at all by the end. Me and my roommate have been drunkenly talking about it for hours and I really can't stress how many ways this movie fails. Even the three separate "endings/goodbyes" the film has SUCK DICK! They're awkward, strangely aggressive and threatening, or just depressing. The idyllic ignorant peaceful Shire is what Bilbo fights for the entire film, and it turns out Hobbits are a fucking bunch of dicks willing to lie to your face if it means they can steal your shit. Awesome. Way to end the franchise with some god damn majesty. The hobbits AS A WHOLE GROUP are all cunts trying to rob you. Nicely done Peter Jackson, you made the prequels to Star Wars, movies far too shoved up your own ass capable of shitting out nothing but fan service.
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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I generally dislike the Hobbit movies thus far. Haven't seen the last one, but I was "meh" about the first one and outright detest the second one. Normally, I'm all for judging every adaptation on its own merits, enjoying the ride and all that. Sure, things might not turn out quite like in the source material, but I'm not one to get stuck on that.

But not when it comes to the Hobbit. I just can't.

I don't mind all the extra stuff they tossed in. I don't really care if it's one film or three. But Jackson's insistence on cutting out parts of the book (like the arrival at Beorn's house), speeding through them (wandering through Mirkwood) or reworking them into gibberish (escape from the elves and the subsequent barrel ride) is just inexcusable. In a film that got its material from Tolkiens notes scribbled on napkins, drawn out and bloated as it is, there's no excuse for not properly covering ALL the content from the ACTUAL BOOK.

Also, you might have noticed that most of my examples were from the second film (and there are more that I haven't mentioned). Yeah, remember how I said I detested that one? My favorite parts of the book were covered in the second film and it really sucked seeing them gutted so we could have a 30 minute CGI-overloaded "goofy" barrel ride/battle. The escape from the Goblin King's domain in the first film was silly, but bearable. This... this was just an abomination.

I'm not saying that they are necessarily bad films, I'm not saying you shouldn't like them. All I'm saying is that I think they're garbage. And I can only hope someone makes a proper film adaptation of this wonderful book during my lifetime...
 

scw55

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Nov 18, 2009
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I'm glad it is over, but I had fun.

It kinda bothered me that the aesthetic was further high-fantasy than the restrained muddy fantasy of the LOTR trilogy. It felt like I was watching a live action Warhammer or World of Warcraft film at points. It was fun, but I didn't like the contrast in visuals.

Bear bomb was funny though.
 

vid87

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May 17, 2010
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I'll say this much - somehow, Legolas's inevitable badassery this time around trumped pretty much everything else he did in the original trilogy. That's an accomplishment.
 

Swarmcrow

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vid87 said:
I'll say this much - somehow, Legolas's inevitable badassery this time around trumped pretty much everything else he did in the original trilogy. That's an accomplishment.
badassery? someone forgot to tell one of the people involved in this film that this wasn't a new installment of "god of war"

seriously ..legolas using the bat to fly around and riding a troll are exactly the kind of thing you would see in a god of war quick time event



then .. he goes around jumping form falling rocks to falling rocks like this was super Mario bros or castelvania


and those wroms made me think the starcraft Zergs where going to join the battle


.. i'm not normally the guy to says that a films felt like videogames


but this film made me think of that horrible rpg videogame they made of lord of the rings ... where suddenly you found yourself fighting along gandalf in the mines moria against balrog with your team of of completely original none canon character while frodo escape ..
 

Mr. Clarinet

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Sep 20, 2012
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I've enjoyed most of the trilogy except for the weirdly urgent camera shots that happened whenever Sauron popped up.

For this movie I was a little disappointed that there weren't more slow paced fun moments. What I liked about the first two is that they could make time for dwarves being silly and singing, this one felt grimdark off the bat.

As for allegiances to the source material this film made it even easier to ignore that it was part of Tolkien's Hobbit.
I kind of saw it as Dwarf Fortress: The movie for pretty much the entire run and I'm extremely glad I had that context going in.
 

MrJoyless

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May 26, 2010
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Wow...just wow.

So Amazing Spiderman is horrible because it goes off source and does silly things some times to the determent of the story, and that's bad.

But, the Hobbit goes off source and does silly things that are huge, dumb, amazingly annoying negatives to the story, and that's OK...as long as it was fun...which it wasn't.

The Hobbit movies sucked, end of story. Yes, I saw every single one in the hope that they'd get better, but that was in vain. These movies are what unlimited budgets do, they muck everything up and make a goddamn cartoon of all the characters.

SMH, you missed the mark this time Bob.
 

Krantos

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I'm probably going to be flayed alive for this, but I really like the Hobbit movies more than the Lord of the Rings ones. I think they are more cohesive and (while occasionally silly) better put together.

Additionally, I felt like the characters were stronger and gave the movie more weight. Bilbo is a great character and his arc along the story is really interesting and engaging. In Lord of the Rings Frodo actually becomes (imo) less interesting as the story unfolds. This is compounded by the fact that other characters end up stealing his spotlight for most of the trilogy.

Personally, I think the Fellowship was the best of the three. Two Towers started to get a lot more muddled as the primary focus turned to Aragorn and Company while Frodo and Sam basically just blundered around in the woods. And if people complained about The Hobbit deviating from the Book, they should DEFINITELY be complaining about how much this movie deviated. Most of TTT's deviations were done for no other reason than to make things more "dramatic". Finally, the Return of the King (ugh). I'm just going to say Melodrama and leave it at that. It seemed like everyone forgot how to act in this movie. Everything was taken to 11 and Waaay overacted. The scene immediately after the big battle when Frodo wakes up makes me cringe everytime I see it. I think if you took out all the parts in this movie that were needlessly slo-mo, the running time would have been just under an hour.

overall, I still like the Lord of the Rings movies, especailly Fellowship, I just think the Hobbit Movies works better as movies.
 

HKFortyRevan

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Sep 1, 2010
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I mostly agree with Bob on this one. Doesn't hold a candle to any of the Lord of the Rings films, but still decent fun. I'd say the films mostly suffered from being produced as prequels to the Rings trilogy, thus meaning it had to meet expectations of a similar "epic" scope that ran contrary to the original book's tone. Wouldn't mind seeing the Hobbit redone as a standalone, more faithful, adaptation at some point down the line.

Jandau said:
I don't mind all the extra stuff they tossed in. I don't really care if it's one film or three. But Jackson's insistence on cutting out parts of the book (like the arrival at Beorn's house), speeding through them (wandering through Mirkwood) or reworking them into gibberish (escape from the elves and the subsequent barrel ride) is just inexcusable. In a film that got its material from Tolkiens notes scribbled on napkins, drawn out and bloated as it is, there's no excuse for not properly covering ALL the content from the ACTUAL BOOK.

Also, you might have noticed that most of my examples were from the second film (and there are more that I haven't mentioned). Yeah, remember how I said I detested that one? My favorite parts of the book were covered in the second film and it really sucked seeing them gutted so we could have a 30 minute CGI-overloaded "goofy" barrel ride/battle. The escape from the Goblin King's domain in the first film was silly, but bearable. This... this was just an abomination.
You might be interested to know that Desolation's Extended Edition does Beorn's introduction justice (they still get chased into the house by his bear form, but they come out to meet him in the morning in much the same manner as the book). The Mirkwood part is also a bit longer, although it still doesn't include the bit where they try to approach the Elven fires unfortunately. Desolation's Extended Edition was pleasantly surprising on the whole though. I was expecting it to be much like Journey's, useless filler dragging out an already painfully long film, but it actually improved the film for me. Although, perhaps not enough to redeem it for someone as disappointed as yourself. The back half of the film in particular still suffers from bloat, not helped by even more scenes of Laketown's Master.
 

mrdude2010

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It's really just like he said. Fun, but not good in the same way the LotR trilogy was. I wish he would have stuck to more practical effects, because there tons of bits of complexity that even the best animators in the world aren't going to properly capture, but in general, it was a fun series, if a bit bloated.
 

Keith Fraser

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I'm holding out for a Silmarillion movie series, since that book's format lends itself to adaptations that allow the film-maker to expand on each individual story. You could make three movies just from three chapter-length parts of it:

-The Tale of Beren and Luthien (which has an easily comprehensible, movie-adapatable plot: guy meets girl, girl's dad is a racist and sends guy on an impossible quest, guy goes on quest anyway, girl runs off to help him, they meet various allies and enemies, stuff happens, the end)
-The Tale of the Children of Hurin (which has a longer book version that's about the right size for a movie and, again, mostly follows one guy, which is much easier for a screenwriter to deal with)
-Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin (again, reasonably simple plot for adaptation: guy escapes from slavery, lives as an outlaw, meets demigod, goes to hidden city with message, meets girl, marries girl, love rival betrays city, big epic battle sequence, love rival dies cinematically, guy and girl escape with survivors, the end)
 

Swarmcrow

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Keith Fraser said:
I'm holding out for a Silmarillion movie series, since that book's format lends itself to adaptations that allow the film-maker to expand on each individual story. You could make three movies just from three chapter-length parts of it:

-The Tale of Beren and Luthien (which has an easily comprehensible, movie-adapatable plot: guy meets girl, girl's dad is a racist and sends guy on an impossible quest, guy goes on quest anyway, girl runs off to help him, they meet various allies and enemies, stuff happens, the end)
-The Tale of the Children of Hurin (which has a longer book version that's about the right size for a movie and, again, mostly follows one guy, which is much easier for a screenwriter to deal with)
-Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin (again, reasonably simple plot for adaptation: guy escapes from slavery, lives as an outlaw, meets demigod, goes to hidden city with message, meets girl, marries girl, love rival betrays city, big epic battle sequence, love rival dies cinematically, guy and girl escape with survivors, the end)
not gonna happend

tolkien's son aint gonna give up the rights to do so ..he wasnt pleased at all with the hobbit
 

Darknacht

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Once all the extended editions(why do the already too long Hobbit movies have extended editions?) come out I want to a fan edit that removes all the crap trying to set up the LotR sequels. The Hobbit films would have been much better if they had kept them tonally closer to the book.
 

Pebkio

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Nov 9, 2009
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I'm going to say something about the Hobbit trilogy:

It's the JRR Tolkien version of the Star Wars Prequels movies.
 

karamazovnew

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Krantos said:
I'm probably going to be flayed alive for this, but I really like the Hobbit movies more than the Lord of the Rings ones. I think they are more cohesive and (while occasionally silly) better put together.

etc.
If you drink the hemlock I will maybe also drink it with you. Kudos mate, it's refreshing to find somebody sharing my views word for word.

I for one think that Hobbit 3 is a masterpiece, not only because it finally surpasses the old artworks inspired by the books, presenting a coherent (for once) epic and mysterious Middle Earth, but also because it achieves that while telling the Hobbit, which isn't particularly Silmarillon material. Here's a short rundown of what I think of the entire series:

The books:
- Hobbit: it's a satire of an epic journey. It's always presented from the perspective of Bilbo, a typical englishman more fond of tea and tobacco than dragons. He is the essence of an innocent race in a land of dark history. His kindness and humility is his main strength, not swords. An invisible hero who plays a big part in a much bigger story. Meanwhile, the dwarves end up doing next to nothing and become anti-heroes by the end. Honestly, the movie gives them a heck of a lot more credit than the book. Wherever they go, they stir up trouble, everything gets solved either by Bilbo, or by some "Deus ex new guy". I remember laughing my ass off when Smaug get's killed by a completely lucky single arrow and the epic battle is reduced to a blunt object to the head, and then the eagles show up. Then the poor hero goes back home where he finds his house auctioned because he was thought dead. Yes it's a silly parody of every epic story ever told. And I loved it.
- LoTR: how Tolkien managed to link the Hobbit to this is nothing short of a miracle. What's more amazing is that he did so by using the exact same tools. You always have the feel that there is more out there, that you only see a small part of the world, during a small part of an epic history. Every mound, every hill, every forest is foreboding, it has some dark history. Most is hinted, nothing is explained. You have the same sense of awe that the hobbits have. There are so many references to WW2 that you get the sense of some simple peasants thrown into Stalingrad, facing Apocalypse while being completely unaware that their small parts are on par with the old tales of say Alexander Nevsky. It's no wonder that these are probably the best books ever written.

The movies:
LoTR: while they benefit from the epic storyline of the books, they miss the mark as movies. All of the atmosphere of the books is wiped out. Some main actors are very poorly chosen (the Hobbits in particular). For example, switch the actors of Boromir and Aragorn and suddenly you have a twice better movie. Everything looks modern, dirty, fake. The extra scenes are painful to see. Yet there are some good parts.
- Fellowship was the best. The Shire is perfect, Moria sublime. Elrond, Galadriel, Boromir, Gandalf, all perfect. The only flaws (upon reading the books) is NOT the absence of Tom Bombadil, but that of the Barrows section, and Glorfindel (not Arwen) saving Frodo. Still, so good it made me buy the books the very next day.
- TTT: I could flaw this and that, but Gollum and the battle of Helm's Deep more than compensate what's wrong with this movie.
- ROTK: No, no, no, no, no. Heck no. The only good part is the final charge of the Rohan. Else, total and utter failure.

Hobbit: I'll start with the main thing: bravo for choosing the actors. All amazing!!! Ichiban! Not one weak name, not a single face which would look out of place in the books.
- 1: doesn't start bad. In fact, the only problems I can think of is the dinner plate washing dance and the Mountain Giants battle scene which both seem forced. Yes, the trolls where in the book (although the scene is somewhat different).
- 2: I think we can all agree that the series could've been shortened to only 2 movies. But, given the context of people already knowing LoTR, the director had no choice but to make the dwarves more badass than in the books. Hence the battle with Smaug, hence the entire Laketown detail bullshit. At least let's all agree that the entire love triangle was completely needless.
- 3: wow boy, finally. This is how ROTK should've been like. The short scenes with Smaug are an homage to the paintings and the movie doesn't waste too much time in killing him. I don't even regret anymore the nudge-nudge-wink-wink manner in which he died in the book. There are flaws, I feel that the movie was a bit cut in places, and I guess that the Director's Cut version will fix that. Even more than that, the movie actually rounds up all the previously needless details about the Laketown folk and the love triangle. It builds up on them and integrates them into a story worthy not of the Hobbit, but of the bigger LoTR itself. The only scene where I rolled my eyes was the one with Thorin hearing voices (sound design problem, not the scene itself). Apart from that, Peter Jackson and his team are bloody geniuses for what they've achieved.